Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Night Vision Goggles Review

Odds are, if you're a gamer, you spent this past weekend destroying your friends in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer. The $60 you spent were well worth it, but do you sometimes think to yourself, "Should I have spent a little more money and gotten the Prestige Edition which features, among other things, the cool looking night vision goggles?" For those of you pondering this important question, AOTS Correspondent Blair Herter has your answer. Check out his review of the unique gaming peripheral and find out if you should rush to your local game retailer and trade in your copy for the whole kit and caboodle.

Note: Blair states that the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Prestige Edition includes a code to download Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. It does not. The code included only allows you to download the original Call of Duty.

Long distance mode turns on heavier IR lights (placed on the front of the lens) to, as scorcher117 above said, flood the room with IR light. Try turning off the lights and looking at the front of the lens, and you'll see what I'm talking about. You can see faint red lights turn on, so don't try sneaking up on anyone in the dark while turning on long distance mode.

Note: "Black and white" mode is not black and white. It is regular color as you see regularly, and green mode just puts a green filter over everything. Don't believe me? Try them on with some level of light on (no you won't be blinded, not in $40 NVG's), or just try looking at your computer screen with them on while the lights are off. *shock* What's that? It sees color? Could it be because they are not in black and white? Then why does it not show color for everything else? It's because all "color" is, is light bouncing off of surfaces in different ways, so without regular light bouncing off, you see black and white.
And no it is not "thermal vision mode" either. That's just dumb. Thermal vision, if you weren't paying attention while playing through the game, makes items that emit heat (i.e. people) show up bright. This does not happen when putting on the NVG's, especially not for $40 NVG's like these.

The long distance mode doesn't actually affect the lens in any way, what happens is that the NVGs work by flooding the room in IR (infrared) light which can be picked up by the camera and LCD array. IR cannot be seen, which is perfect for stealth operations and other military stuff.
The long range mode actually activates a bunch of other IR diodes and also (you might have noticed the red ring of lights when you engage long range) increases the amount of light emitted by backlighting the diodes.

And I've actually been using these fairly consistently and haven't even burned through my first set of batteries...though it may be because i don't use the long range for fear of discovery via aforementioned red ring of diodes.